David Thomson, in his book “Have You Seen?” said of Anthony Mann and Charlton Heston’s Bank Holiday stand-by El Cid, that it is “one of the last authentic epics in American film history,” although admitting that today it is “rather awkwardly anti-Islamic in its basis.” At the time of writing (2008) he didn’t think “there […]

The tale of Robin Hood is one oft told, many times on film alone, including the recent Ridley Scott / Russell Crowe team up, sold to Crowe as a chance to make a “sequel” of sorts to their previous historic rip-snorter,Gladiator. Robin Hood sprang from an original “hot” script called Nottingham, yet the two articles bear as much relation […]

“Keeping it real“- no, not Sir Ridley Scott trying to get down with the kids, more his guiding mantra. Scott is first and foremost a builder of worlds, his art school, set design and commercial background the cornerstone of his various milieaux. If people are dismissive of the Ridley Scott “style”, or even search […]

“We live as we dream – alone,” quoth the cover of Alien‘s script forebodingly, the words from Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, just one of the author’s influences on the film – the knackered space tug / ore refinery Nostromo is named after Conrad’s novel of corruption, revolution, and corporate amorality. The ship is a character in […]

“Strength And Honour.” Nothing quite expresses so bluntly and poetically the brute power of ancient Rome than Nick Livesey’s original, abandoned approach to the opening of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Given the script for the first quarter of the film and the wheatfield rushes of star Russell Crowe as Roman General Maximus brushing his fingers through […]

Here’s a couple of video segments for you on The Martian, Sir Ridley Scott’s big screen adaptation of author Andy Weir’s runaway best seller, about an astronaut erroneously left for dead on the red planet after a mission goes sour, who must survive long enough (three years!) for a rescue mission to pick him up. […]

The Martian is the latest in a recent pleasing run of “life will find a way” “hard” science fiction films such as Interstellar and Gravity – more grounded than the former (and latter, I suppose!), a hoorah for science and can-do American spirit (with a little help from the Chinese). Forfending the larger philosophical leanings […]

Ah, twitter. It’s great when you throw an idea out there and some kindred soul flies with it. The other day I tweeted, “Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and Blade Runner – crazy companion pieces?” Well, Paul Bullock saw the connection, and together we volleyed back and forth a few ideas on links between the films, specifically, the […]

“A king has his reign, then he dies. It’s inevitable.” It is undeniable that Prometheus has problems in the script department, that characters behave in odd ways and are sometimes the writers pawns, moved from point A to B to get to the next set piece. Even when one takes into account first draft scripter […]